Disney sees Infinity video game hitting $1 billion in revenue

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co expects revenue from its
10-month-old Infinity video game to reach $1 billion even as
rivals also combine physical toys with video games, Jimmy Pitaro,
president of the company's interactive unit, said in an
interview.

Disney launched Infinity in August to help turn around its
interactive gaming unit, which lost $1.4 billion from fiscal year
2008 to 2013. In an overhaul in March, the division laid off
about one-quarter of the workforce, cut the number of games it
develops and focused its advertising more on the fast-changing
mobile market.

A month ago, Disney reported global revenue of $550 million for
Infinity. Sales of the game helped the interactive unit post a
$14 million profit for the quarter that ended in March, its third
consecutive quarterly profit.

"We will be a billion-dollar franchise," Pitaro said of Infinity
in an interview on Wednesday at the E3 video game conference. He
declined to provide a time frame.

A Disney spokeswoman said Pitaro's projection was "just the
beginning of what we expect it to do. This is a long-term game
franchise with enormous revenue potential."

Infinity lets users play with characters from Disney and Pixar
films such as Anna and Elsa from "Frozen," Captain Jack Sparrow
from "Pirates of the Caribbean" and Lightning McQueen from
"Cars."

The company is launching the next version of the game, "Disney
Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes" in the fall, bringing in
Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man and others.

Infinity competes with Activision Blizzard Inc's "Skylanders"
franchise that first successfully introduced the concept of toys
coming to life on screen when placed on an electronic base. Since
its launch in October 2011 until the end of 2013, "Skylanders"
has surpassed $2 billion in revenue.

This week at E3, Nintendo Co Ltd announced it would release
"amiibo" toys of characters such as Mario with a chip that
activates them in games when placed on the GamePad controller of
its Wii U console.

Disney also plans more mobile "Star Wars" games before its
scheduled December 2015 release of the seventh movie in the
classic sci-fi series, Pitaro said. Disney also has a multi-year
licensing deal with Electronic Arts Inc to develop a different
line of "Star Wars" games.